The Night Before Christmas

I think I’ve had a bit of a turnaround in recent years. From being someone who thoroughly detested Christmas it’s now a time of year I rather enjoy. It might be having kids that does it but in the past years we have tended to go for more of a German Christmas celebration. Partly, this has been because we have been in Germany for several Christmases but also, in our old house, we didn’t have a chimney breast to do the whole Santa-comes-down-the-chimney routine. Instead we have always had Santa visit the house – except for last year when Santa crashed the sledge and I had to go an pick up the presents – in fact it was more a case that it was -15C outside and the Santa costume didn’t bleeding fit anymore.

With us moving to the new house, we can now go for more of a British type of Christmas – or at least the Dickensian type of faery-tale that I have a certain fondness for. Given that we have the high ceilings and Victoriana around the house it seems all the more fitting. The first task was to get a big tree. The thing with Christmas trees is that they have gone very expensive in the last few years. Part of the reason for this is that they are either varieties designed to keep their needles longer or they have been treated specially to retain them. They will all drop their leaves eventually (as they are all, essentially, dead trees) and I have an old trick that works far more effectively which is to leave the tree out in the garden for a few nights so it gets the frost or snowed on or both. My mother in law didn’t do this and the little tree that she bought lost needles like crazy. She tried to move it yesterday to hoover around it and the remaining needles dropped off leaving a naked twig which she then flung out into the back garden in a fit of pique. She has now has a bowl of baubles sitting on the table with some fairy lights arranged over the top: it’s what I like to call “The Emperor’s New Christmas Tree.”

As for our tree, I went for a traditional fir in what I would describe as the biggest, silliest thing I could find. It was described as being a 2.5 metre tree but when I eventually measured it at home it came to a whopping 2.7 metres. I say eventually as it does help to get a 2.7 metre tree home if one remembers to take a 2.7 metre car along to transport it. Anyway, I think it looks rather good and at least looks in proportion against my idiotically huge telly:

  One thing you may have noticed is that there is no star or angel on top. This is because Raymond was entrusted to “make” an angel and this is what he came up with (and which Nina wasn’t having anything to do with):

Well, I suppose Doctor Who is now part of a traditional Christmas. The other thing was to hang the socks in front of the fireplace. This does have the advantage in that we can encourage the children to go to bed early although I did actually struggle to find anything to hang them from:

Now, the fireplace is not fully open and this is why I had my own suspicions about Santa’s modus operandi as a child (we went smokeless and the fire place was blocked up). Anyway, surely Santa is magic and can get around that little problem. It looks like he is more svelte than one would have imagined:

The only downside is that we don’t have snow at Christmas for the first time in years. In fact we have had torrential rain all day. Oh well, Merry Christmas!

Going With The Flow

I commented back in October that I thought raising the motorway speed limit to 80mph would be of little benefit. However, I also commented that that there was little to be gained by driving at 70 over 60mph but that I drive at the higher speed to prevent boredom. I have been down in Liverpool this weekend and, as an experiment, I have actually tried this to see if there is much of a saving to be made by driving more slowly. The aim was to drive down at a steady 70 and back at 60. As I don’t have cruise control I was trying to do this manually and simply speeding up when the speed was below the target speed and slowing down when the speed crept up. It’s a simple enough method but I used the car’s trip computer to calculate average mpg and speed for the journey. Even though this was meant to be a real world test I didn’t exactly have laboratory conditions as when I drove down the weather was clear and dry - driving back, I had torrential  rain and poor visibility: the extra rolling resistance from the wet road as well as the addition of dipped headlights and both sets of wipers permanently on will have had a hit on consumption but I  did, at least have a clear run without delays either way.

The results are quite interesting. Driving down the average speed for the motorway section came in at 66mph which means that the speedometer over-reads by around 4mph. The average fuel consumption for this worked out at 46.5 mpg. On the way back the average speed was 56mph and the fuel consumption 52.5mpg. That’s a reasonable improvement and it is possible that this figure could have been higher if the weather had been better.  The motorway journey took 35 minutes longer and used 2.68 less litres of fuel: about £3.50 worth at current rates. But which was the better journey?

From an environmental point of view, the slower journey was the clear winner: It resulted in 2.68 litres of fuel being unburned which preserves the fuel reserves, reduces the amount of oil needing to be pumped and refined and prevents 6.14 Kg of CO2 being directly emitted from the tail pipe. Additionally, there would be a reduction in wear to tyres and other components with a limited lifespan. Clearly it is a worthwhile exercise environmentally, however, that is not my prime reason for wanting to reduce fuel consumption. Financially, I have saved my £3.50 but it has cost me 35 minutes of my time. This equates to an hourly rate of £6 – considering that this is on taxed income it is more like £9 per hour: well above minimum wage levels but it isn’t that huge that I wouldn’t appreciate a faster journey. I suppose this leads to the next question, which is: is it really worth it?

I don’t particularly enjoy long motorway journeys; I find them rather dull. However, the longer the journey, the more stressful it becomes. This brings up another point which one of my friends pointed out on Sunday night. Driving at roughly 60mph means an awful lot of time sharing road space with HGVs. For the most part they are decent professional drivers but driving near to them is an intimidating experience and there will always be slower vehicles which will necessitate overtaking – this can be quite stressful when the adjacent middle-lane traffic is moving significantly faster. Driving at 70 means that most traffic is travelling at roughly the same speed making overtaking lorries much easier and with only a few vehicles overtaking at higher (and presumably illegal) speeds. My friend’s example was driving down the M6 towards Birmingham. Driving North is easier and the traffic North of Preston is much lighter. When on the M74 it can mean only catching up with a lorry every 5 minutes or so and the middle lane will usually be free at that point. Even so, the whole journey did feel quit a bit more stressful – I suspect it may be easier in a vehicle with cruise control.

It’s an interesting experiment: whilst it clearly shows that travelling at a slower speed will save on fuel, the benefits are not that great to make it the obvious choice for longer journeys. I’d be interested to see the results for similar weather conditions and for the results using a diesel engined car (particularly suited to dull motorway journeys). However, for me the preferable speed is simply to go with the flow. Mind you, I still think that an increase to 80mph is a largely pointless exercise.

Hurricane Bawbag

I woke up at my usual time, 6am, on Thursday only to decide that I would be “Working From Home” that day. I had intended to head back from the office around lunchtime anyway as we had been forecast  inclement weather but as Radio Scotland informed me that we would be suffering very high winds (one gust measured at around 165mph) from around 10:00 I thought it best to stay at home and use the wonders of the internet to carry out an honest day’s work. As it turns out, this was a smart move and the only scars I’ve got to show for it are a partially damaged garage roof and a smashed birdhouse. I also managed to find a real use for Twitter for the first time as I used the trend #scotstorm to get a feed of information about what was happening around the country. However, some (presumably West coast) wag complained that the Americans always get a proper moniker for their crappy weather and promptly named our storm #hurricanebawbag.

For those unfamiliar with the Glasgow patter a Bawbag is the scrotum or, more commonly, a name applied to a wanton dullard or irritant – often affectionately to one’s friends or workmates at a time of particular ineptitude or incompetence. It seems rather a fitting name for some of the most powerful storms in recent years as it rather captures the dark, devil-may-care nature of Scottish humour but, for what was clearly a intended as a throwaway wisecrack, the term trended worldwide: presumably perplexing those overseas as to why a serious meteorological event should be given such a vulgar name. However, I found it quite useful. As I was meant to be supporting the computer systems of many important Scottish based institutions it was very handy being able to follow the progress of #hurricanebawbag and seeing how much of our infrastructure was being affected. This rather raises the question of why we don’t name our natural disasters in the same way that our American cousins do.

In fact, the storm had been given the official name of Friedhelm by the Free University of Berlin. I hadn’t heard of this and, given the usual naming conventions for these things, there must have been a previous five storm names this year. Now, as much as these are of interest to meteorologists, they aren’t particularly of much use to the general public unless they are advertised. Just being told about them on the weather broadcasts or BBC news bulletins should be enough. As it is 100mph gusts are not actually that unusual in Scotland but big storms like Friedhelm/Bawbag can cause great disruption and destruction. I think, for once, some credit has to go to the Scottish Government and Police as they closed schools early and the Police gave an unambiguous “DO NOT TRAVEL between 14:00 and 21:00” warning on the day. As it is, no-one died as a direct result of the storm which is as unusual as it is welcome for an extreme weather event. Anyway, the storm did produce some really rather amazing pictures:

Apparently, there is power in the wind.

This was also on the BBC Scotland website from Troon in Ayrshire.

If you live on a  Scottish housing scheme it is compulsary to have one of these things (don't believe me - try Google Earth)



This was the Clyde - there are meant to be Nuclear Submarines in there somewhere!

It’s all quite breath-taking result but I really do think we should start officially naming extreme weather events. #SnowstormFUBAR, anyone?

Made in Germany

“Here's a daily sample of items recommended for you: Miles Davis – Milestones; Shostakovich - Symphony no 7; Simon and Garfunkel - Bookends; Rammstein – Made in Germany  1995-2011.”

I think I have finally and completely broken Amazon’s search engine although, in fairness, it’s all stuff I like – and look, Rammstein have a new album out. Actually it’s a “Greatest Hits” album of sorts. The problem with these albums is that no two people are ever going to agree on the content. They can be objective by including tracks based on sales or chart placings - or a simple singles collection. Some artists have gone as far as letting their fans choose the listing which is very democratic but may throw up choices which are not the easiest entry point for the casual listener – which is surely the target audience. Many artists will produce an album to promote their latest tour – which is what I believe Rammstein have done here. However, for a fan of the group (I have all six studio albums) I would say it is neither their best nor most accessible material. The question is, what would I pick?

Made in Germany has one new track, Mein Land; this is often a sneaky trick to get die-hard fans to buy the whole album but they have released this as a separate single (£7 for the CD single on Amazon – sod that!) which is decent enough. They have a couple of other singles-only releases in Das Modell (a Kraftwerk cover) and Stripped (the Depeche Mode song) I would have included the latter but they chose neither - I suppose, in fairness, they are both cover versions so it isn’t entirely representative of the band's output. However, they only include one song from their first album, Du Riechst So Gut, inspired by Patrick Süskind's Das Perfum (as was Nirvana's Senseless Apprentice). I've no arguments with that as it's a great track but they have omitted their second single, Seemann - probably my favourite Rammstein song. Other tracks that could have been included are Asche zu Asche and Rammstein but possibly more for historical reasons. There are two tracks included from their second album: Engel and Du Hast. I wouldn't argue with these choices either and I tend to find the Sehnsucht album a bit hard-going lyrically - it lacks the morbidly black humour of later albums whilst still addressing subject matter that is unlikely to make for comfortable dinner party conversation.

Made in Germany takes five tracks from their third album, Mutter. In fairness, I think any of the tracks could have made it to a Best Of album but, inevitably, some tracks would have to be left off. Having said that, it is a great surprise that one of their best known tracks, Feuer Frei!, is missing. Not only was this a UK hit single but also featured as the opening theme music to the Vin Diesel film XXX (admittedly, it was probably the best thing about it). I'm not sure what the rationale was behind it but, if anything, I would have left off the track Mutter in it's place. The next album Reise, Reise lends 4 tracks to the compilation but, whilst I have no issue with Mein Teil or Ohne Dich, I'm not sure why Amerika or Keine Lust were included other than the fact that they were singles (in which case, why no Seemann or Feuer Frei!) In their place I would have included the far superior Moskau, the title track Reise, Reise and, possibly, the unusual acoustic Los.

They only include the title track, Rosenrot, from their fifth album. This a decent enough single based around the Brothers Grimm faery tale but I would have thought the Benzin and Mann Gegen Mann singles should have been included as well. Rosenrot tends to be a rather unloved album but I think it definitely has its plus points and Wo Bis Du (a duet with Texas's Sharleen Spiteri) and the haunting electronica of Ein Lied are pretty decent if a little off track for a greatest hits compilation. However, I found the selection from sixth album, Liebe ist Für Alle da, to be quite strange. For a start, why is the risible Pussy included (probably the worst thing they have done and surely only intended as a stunt.) The other track is the single Haifisch, which is OK, but they miss the excellent Ich Tu Dir Weh and I would have thought Rammlied, Mehr and Wiener Blut are more than worthy of inclusion.

Ultimately, Greatest Hits compilations are not intended for the confirmed fan but the curious casual listener. In that respect, they have covered a reasonable amount of material but I think a straight singles collection would have produced a more rounded album. In fact, for a new listener to the band, I would recommend the Mutter album as a much better starting point altogether. Never mind - that Miles Davis CD looks interesting.

Guaranteed Delivery

I seem to have been ordering lots of things via the internet lately. In part it’s due to Christmas lurking up but I’ve also been ordering lots of things for the house as well. On the one hand, buying things off the internet is great because I really despise shopping. It really doesn’t have anything going for it: driving into town; trying to park in a car park the size of Bulgaria with spaces the size of a postage stamp; trying to avoid the general awfulness that is other people; useless shop staff; queuing up for stuff and having to lug it back home again: all this and I actually have to pay for the privilege. No, internet shopping can make the whole process bearable but it does have the downside of waiting for the stuff to be delivered.

Home deliveries used to be a nightmare for me. Our old house was stuck out in the middle of nowhere: not in a conurbation of any sort, in an unnamed road; in a postcode which covered several miles and in an old farm building that wasn’t even visible from the road. Other than the postman, I could not guarantee anyone actually finding the place. Any home delivery services we used were a bit of a gamble: some where surprisingly good and could find us without prompting; others would get so far and have to ring us for directions (which is fair enough); others would give up and leave it to one of their colleagues and the absolute worst one failed to deliver four days in a row – eventually, I got sarcastic on the phone to them and asked if it would be easier if I found them. They took me up on the offer and I ended up driving down to their depot in Cumbernauld and discovered that they had no idea of concepts such as Satellite Navigation, Road Maps or Scotland. They did show me their route planner which was a photocopy of some aged and ragged pre-Ordinance Survey map that indicated the whole of Stirlingshire with the words “Here be beasties!”

I would have hoped that the delivery situation would have improved with us having moved back to some sort of civilisation (well we have two Scottish league clubs – OK, one of them is East Stirlingshire so that doesn’t count). We now have a numbered house on a named street and a concise postcode. In fairness, home deliveries have improved but there is a quirk in our road in that the odd numbered houses start two thirds of the way up so we are No 9 but the flat opposite is 218. Also, as there are some new builds on the sites of the old foundries these have their own naming and numbering systems within the main street so it does add to the confusion. The problem I had this week was that the parcel which was being delivered had to be signed for. As I was off work on Monday I paid extra to get a guaranteed delivery date. This could have been at any time from 7am to 9pm (which I thought was a bit steep) but I waited in – nothing arrived. I checked the website of the courier firm, Yodel, and they had a note that a delivery attempt was made but no-one was in and a card was left – it wasn’t and nothing was left. I think it was at this point that my blood began to boil.

I have to say that I had never really heard of Yodel before but on searching for information about them I found a review site that did not make for pretty reading. On looking further it appears to be a monster of a firm that is buying out smaller operators and turning itself into some sort of Royal Mail rivalling behemoth. It looks like this started out as a renaming of the Home Delivery Network (who were pretty useless in the past) and have merged with other operators like DHL (who used to be really good). From what I can tell, they run their network using lurid green vans which then rely on free-lancers to make the final delivery in a similar way to how the Royal Mail relies on blokes with bikes. However, it does seem to be lacking the cohesiveness and consistency of service that the Royal Mail provides. I discovered this when I rang the Edinburgh office to find out what had happened to my parcel. I ended up speaking to someone with a dodgy accent who had never heard of the name “Maxwell” – it’s a pretty common Scottish surname so I am assuming that they weren’t based in Edinburgh. They eventually told me that they would deliver the parcel again on Tuesday. They didn’t.

When I phoned back on Wednesday I was about to reach critical mass. However, I ended up speaking with (what sounded like) an Indian lady who was very helpful and gave me the mobile phone number of a Mr Kelly who is their delivery man. It ended up being the number of a rather nice lady called Kelly. Sure enough it was the mismatched road numbers that threw her and after speaking to her the package arrived half an hour later. In fact, we saw Kelly several times as various purchases arrived. It turned out that she had phoned the head office as soon as she realised she couldn’t find the address and needed to speak to us to confirm the location. For some reason this is not what Yodel recorded. On the whole, I don’t think Yodel has a bad business model and it could complement the Royal Mail, who do daytime deliveries, by having someone with good local knowledge that can deliver parcels in the evening when people are more likely to be home. However, I really think they need to improve their communications. They appear to be laying people off all over the place to make cost savings but getting the job done right first time is the biggest saving of all.

I also had a delivery made to my work address this week. An order I made on Tuesday afternoon with a firm based in London was delivered at my office in Livingston before 9am the next day – I thought that was pretty impressive (the courier was UPS). I also ordered a cable last Friday from a firm offering “guaranteed next day delivery”. It arrived on Wednesday.

Oh My God! It’s Huge!

I finally went ahead and bought myself a new telly this week but I have come to the conclusion that it is completely ridiculous. The TV is nice enough and I did research the thing quite well. I was unsure of what size to get so I referred to several websites which gave an idea of what sort of TV size to get for a given viewing distance. Most of these may have well as said “get a bloody huge one”. For my 4.3 metre viewing distance they indicated anything from 46” through 50” and 55” up to about 105” – I thought this last one was confusing inches with centimetres but it was an American author so I am just assuming that they were slightly potty. I thought I would err on the side of caution (and thrift) by going for the lower end of these figures and having been really impressed with a Samsung set (UE46D5000) a couple of months ago I went back down to Comet for a second look – only to be told that they had stopped stocking it as it was “so 2011”. Bugger! Anyway, I had a search online and found it was still available via the Interweb but the cheapest retailer had priced it at £50 more than the next model up in the range (UE46D5520 - which comes with something called SMART TV) so I went for the cheaper (and higher spec) model instead. It turns out this must have been a pricing mistake as they had reversed the prices the next day, but the retailer shipped it at the original price – much to their credit.

Anyway, it arrived on Wednesday. The box was huge but it did, at least, weigh significantly less than my old CRT set which was made out of lead or uranium or something. We unpacked it and carefully put the stand together. It just about fits in the space at the end of the room. When switched off it is a jet black monolith sitting ominously at the end of the room like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey or an iPhone that is actually designed for my crappy eyesight. It’s actually rather intimidating. Anyway, I connected the aerial cable and switched it on. After a few minutes configuration and tuning it burst into life and I have to say the picture is spectacular. It comes with Freeview HD built in and this is the first time I’ve actually had an HD device in the house. David Attenborough’s latest series was on BBC One HD which really shows the technology at its best. Just to show Nina how HD differs from SD I switched it over to the standard BBC One – it also looked pretty good. In fact, it takes a keen eye to spot the improvement in HD and this is what appealed to me in the shop: the up-scaling is fantastic and even some older recordings look good, but it becomes very obvious that we are watching standard Freeview on some channels. The BBC tend to broadcast at a very high bit-rate but when we watched some of the smaller digital channels it shows up the difference quite easily. We saw The Big Bang Theory on E4+1 and it was obvious that the definition was lower. It is possible to see this even on my old 32” CRT but when the picture is blown up by 50%, with nearly twice the pixels to play with, the difference is quite marked.

This was all going well until I connected the AV amp to the TV via component. Previously I had used S-Video connections to the CRT telly but these are very much out of vogue and the only analogue connections available are composite and component. I connected the component to the TV and immediately noticed that the picture was haywire – everything looked green. After some experimentation I discovered that the TV will not handle the amp’s component output and even the composite output looked terrible. I ended up connecting the amp to the SCART socket via the composite cable and this was much better. It looks reasonably OK but it is obvious that the picture is still not as sharp as it could be and it is a bit of a fly in the ointment. I will be able to get around this when I replace the DVD, PVR and satellite receivers with HDMI outputting units but it is rather disappointing. I think one of the advantages of CRT was that it was natively analogue rather than having to convert it to digital and I suppose this is how they suck you in: once the format changes it pushes the consumer down the path to upgrade everything at once.

I mentioned that the set came with SMART TV and this is Samsung’s method of implementing Internet TV. It includes an “app” store whereby connections to services like iPlayer, Youtube and BlinkBox can be downloaded as well as streaming for LoveFilm. Fortunately, I wired in an Ethernet socket when I redecorated the room so I was able to connect this. It’s quite impressive. We started off by searching free TV episodes on Blinkbox. This works quite well but they have adverts every 10 minutes or so (which is fair enough on a free service). It does seem to stutter a little whilst buffering to begin with but it soon settled down and ran through quite happily. And this is where I think it becomes completely ridiculous as, having bought this state of the art technology, what is the first thing that we watched on it: The Web Planet, an episode of Doctor Who from 1965 – made in black and white and originally broadcast in the same 405 line VHF system that the BBC had been using since 1936 (BBC One has just marked its 75^th birthday). At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how good the hardware is, it is the content that matters.

So that’s it, I have finally replaced the old TV after a long line of excuses: LCD not looking as good, being broke, not risking small children breaking it, being broke, not wanting a flat screen TV that the cat couldn’t sleep on, being broke, moving house as a good excuse for being broke, redecorating the house, being broke because of the dog’s vet bills and probably dithering a bit as to what I actually wanted. The reception from the rest of the house is a bit mixed. Nina wants to know if we can still watch German TV, Raymond is obsessed about the internet thing and Jake burst into tears because it is big and scary. As for me, I’m just going to read a book tonight: there’s nothing much on TV.

Lest We Forget

Remembrance Sunday is always a sombre occasion but in recent years it seems to have been turned into some sort of season, like advent or lent, whereby everyone has to be seen to wear a poppy and publically show their gratitude to those who made the ultimate sacrifice. I find the whole thing is being rather devalued; it is hard to impress on to young people that a poppy stands for something and is not a mere fashion accessory when they quite possibly don’t know any World War veterans and their only knowledge of what was involved is dictated by dry history lessons, jingoistic old war films and tasteless Second World War themed computer games. There are now no First World War veterans left alive but I was lucky enough to know my grandfather who was a veteran of Gallipoli. He didn’t talk about his military service often but he did go to the local Legion and keep in touch with other veterans. However, when he did speak about the war he was fascinating - although his attitude to his military service often baffled me.

Gallipoli, like many battles of the Great War, was both a military and human disaster. It is probably best remembered for its Australian and New Zealand contingent, the ANZACs, although around half of the allied soldiers (and casualties) were British. The aim of the campaign was to open up a supply route to Russia. The allied commanders had not expected the Ottoman military to offer much resistance – they had seriously underestimated them. The casualties were horrendous on both sides – over 44,000 Allied soldiers were killed with nearly 100,000 wounded; the Ottoman figures were even worse with over 250,000 dead or wounded. Aside from  this senseless waste of life the conditions in which the soldiers served were appalling: swelteringly hot, the air hanging with the stench of unburied corpses and insanitary conditions leading outbreaks of dysentery. The campaign was going nowhere and with the news of the military failures and atrocious conditions arriving home there was pressure for a withdrawal.  Eventually, an evacuation was made which proved to be a relative success: there were very few allied casualties – unfortunately, one of them was my grandfather who was shot in the arm in January 1916.

Being wounded in 1916 was a big deal: remember, this was before the advent of antibiotics. By the time he had reached the hospital ship, his arm had become infected and the wound was becoming gangrenous. The standard medical procedure was to stop the spread of infection by amputation. However, the doctors treating him could see that the wound was not that deep. They told him that they could try to cut out the infected flesh but that it was risky and that recovery would take a very long time. As I can recall him saying to me, “I told the doctors: ‘Well, I’ve got the rest of my life to recover.’” In fact, it’s worth considering his age. During the early stages of the war, signing up to fight for King and Country was seen as a great adventure from which everyone would be Home By Christmas and, when the Lancashire Fusiliers came beckoning, it was a difficult offer to turn down: particularly as the scale of the battles and the horror of mechanised warfare were largely unknown.  My grandfather was just 17 when he faked his papers to join up. He was barely 18 when the boats landed at Cape Helles. So when he spoke of having the rest of his life he was talking about almost his entire adult life. As it was, he did recover but it put an end to his military career and the strength in his arm was limited – although he did serve as an officer in the Home Guard during the Second World War (however, I couldn’t imagine him as a Captain Mainwaring type character). He lived a surprisingly long life; he died at the age of 92 and was honoured by members of the Legion at his funeral.

The odd thing - the one thing that baffled me - is that he had no regrets at all about signing up. My other grandfather served in the RAF during World War Two and my father and most of my uncles have had some sort of military service or conscription. I think their experiences varied: my father seemed to enjoy his army life but his brother hated his: possibly as he ended up in an active war zone. My mother’s brother served in the RAF during the Malayan Emergency – I think he objected to having been conscripted into the Air Force but he talks quite happily about it now. I also had a cousin who had been sent in to assist survivors at a concentration camp in liberated Germany who could barely talk about what he had witnessed. I would have imagined that my grandfather may have had similar feelings. It was clear that the First World War was a humanitarian disaster and largely avoidable so I imagined that, with hindsight, no-one would willingly sign up to the conflict. However, this was not the case with my grandfather: he said that he would have signed up again “without a moment’s hesitation.“ I could never understand that: maybe it was the rose tinted view of an old man or the stiff upper lipped bravado of a Victorian upbringing. I will probably never know.

Now that Second World War veterans are almost as old as my grandfather was, it is important for young people to get an idea of what war is really about: not from action films and computer games, and not from wearing a red poppy and showing faux grief during organised silences; but from actual living testament of those who were there. I was lucky to be able to speak to veterans and actually learn something of what they had witnessed. It is important to realise that war is not merely history. What happened years ago will affect people for the rest of their lives and their families’ lives. Our leaders now seem far too trigger happy for my liking – it’s worth remembering that their actions will have long lasting effects on real people.

Sounds Caress My Ears

Recently, I've been replacing a few of my old Led Zeppelin LPs with CDs. In fact, I did this to a point years ago. In the early 90s they released the "Remasters" double CD which, for a few years, acted as a sort of Best Of compilation and it did help replace quite a few tracks - particularly from their early albums where my vinyl had seen better days. This worked, to a point, but I found that there were a significant number of tracks that I really likes that were missed: How Many More Times from Led Zeppelin I, Bring it on Home from II, When the Levee Breaks from IV and The Ocean from Houses of the Holy. Then there were huge swaths such as the whole second side of III and nothing at all from sides one, three and four of Physical Graffiti. What was on Remasters, however, was a revelation. Remastering is often a cheap trick by established rock groups to make their fans buy their back catalogue... again. However the Led Zeppelin remasters fixed many of the original production errors - for example, listen to the original vinyl of No Quarter and there is a shocking error where a cymbal appears from nowhere: on Remasters this was resolved. Nevertheless, for a band that I liked in bucket loads, I felt that I would really appreciate the original albums in digital form - as CDs have come down in price this has become more affordable.

I originally became interested in Led Zeppelin when I was learning the guitar in my teens. With a combination of guitar tabs from magazines and closely listening to the original albums I manage to replicate the guitar parts quite well. Some of the songs have almost become a right of passage for budding guitarists and this is not without good reason. Stairway To Heaven may be stereotypical for the aspiring axe-man but it does teach lots of very useful techniques in terms of picking, strumming, fretwork and so on. In fact I get rather bored when I hear it now - which is probably my own fault. It is quite well known that the opening descending base line was inspired by the Spirit song Taurus but the chords are not exactly the same. Unfortunately, the guitar magazine I was using had published the chords from Taurus and it took me ages to work out the real thing (one of my friends showed them to me - well, it’s easy when you know how). Needless to say, I was very much a Jimmy Page fan and I enjoyed much of his solo work - including the much derided collaborations with Paul Rogers and David Coverdale. However, on listening to the original albums on CD it has really brought it home to me what an astonishing presence Robert Plant is - and it has also shown up quite a few holes in my own music collection.

Led Zeppelin were formed out of the ashes of The Yardbirds in 1968. Jimmy Page was left with tour commitments and needed to piece together a band to fulfil these. With former session keyboard man John Paul Jones on board for vocal duties he was recommended a young Robert Plant who had been playing with Midlands outfit Band Of Joy who also provided drummer John Bonham. Thus, The New Yardbirds were formed - after just a few months they had changed name to Led Zeppelin (after a Keith Moon joke) and recorded their first album. Led Zeppelin I was effectively a studio recording of the bands live show at the time and consists of a few cover versions, a couple of songs from The Yardbirds later shows (and a couple of tracks that could easily have been Yardbirds singles) and some tracks that marked the eclectic and yet exhilarating sound that would define Led Zeppelin. The music draws upon three big musical influences - British Heavy Rock, Blues and acoustic Folk-Rock. In fact it is this third influence that provides the first indications of Plants vocal abilities with Babe, I'm Going To Leave You. I learned the guitar part for this and still play it on a nylon strung guitar: the chords feel incredible comfortable and intuitive. However, it is Plant's vocals which really stand out here. I have a version of this by Joan Baez and she just sounds pained rather than impassioned. The blues covers also show how powerful his voice was - bleeding through the microphones and somehow managing to compete with Page and Bonham's thunderous backing. It's clearly a work in progress but a magnificent one none-the-less and very much haunted by the ghost of bluesmen past.

Led Zeppelin II was recorded whilst touring in 1969 and opens with one of the most familiar tunes in heavy rock in the form of Whole Lotta Love. In fact, given it's familiarity, it's worth considering what a peculiar tune it is. Kicking off with the familiar Heavy Metal riff (Top of the Pops theme to the uninitiated) Plant sings an old Muddy Waters lyrics over the top whilst Bonham batters away in the background - so far so good. It then breaks into a free Jazz style section where all Hell breaks lose and Page plays a Theremin solo; a quick guitar break and then the original riff returns until Plant goes all a capella - then repeat to fade. Somehow it works and the rest of the album follows this up just as well. There is quiet a bit of variety in this album with the bluesy Lemon Song (effectively a reworking of Howlin' Wolf's Killing Floor) and the gentle Thank You but the amps are definitely turned up high. Led Zeppelin are often cited as a major influence on Heavy Metal music and, of all their albums, this is the one that most closely approaches that.

 Led Zeppelin III has a reputation for being a bit of a curate's egg. I think that's rather unfair. In fact, side one is a typical Zeppelin mix with Immigrant Song being a rock standard (although no guitar solos) and containing Robert Plants famous battle cry. Since I've Been Loving You is a brilliant slow blues number and Friends has an interestingly Middle Eastern feel about it. The other two songs are standard Zep rockers but it is side two that gives the album the reputation as something else. The band wrote and rehearsed the album whilst staying at the semi-derelict Bron yr Aur cottage in Snowdonia (I looked this up and it isn’t where I thought - there is a similarly named place near Llanrwst which I have occasionally driven past). The lack of electricity and the general peaceful ambience of the place led to the second side of the record being dominated by the bands folk-rock side. They really come into their own here and show that you don't have to bludgeon your audience with Marshall stacks to make your point. There is real power here and they also sound like they are having a fun time of it - particularly on Bron yr Aur Stomp which is about Plant's walks through Snowdonia with his dog. His lyrics here had developed far beyond simple innuendo and I feel that the band had really gelled as a creative unit. It remains a personal favourite of mine.

Led Zeppelin IV is regarded as their masterpiece and was the first  album of theirs that I heard. I can recall that I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it at the time. It didn't feel like the heavy rock group I had imagined but rather some mystic riddlers creating a soundscape whilst cloaked in monks robes - or something like that anyway. In a way, some of the mysticism is down to the rather odd song titles: Black Dog was named because a black dog was present at recording (and not because the song was meant to be about depression as I had assumed) and Four Sticks was named because John Bonham used two sets of drum sticks simultaneously to produce the exotic oriental rhythms. The bulk of this album was included in the Remasters release but it actually missed off three of my favourite tracks: the aforementioned Four Sticks, the gentle acoustic Going To California and their take on Memphis Minnie's When The Levee Breaks. This latter track's drum intro has been sampled-to-death but familiarity doesn’t breed contempt: it's magnificent and the remastered CD just brings out the best from the original recording - Plant's harmonica playing has never sounded better. Oddly, the other track that really seems to improve is the Battle Of Evermore which was a duet with Sandy Denny from Fairport Convention. I've always loved how her voice becomes intertwined with Plant's and when digitally remastered it becomes crystal clear (yes, my old vinyl was a bit tatty).

If IV was all mysterious, then I think they were having a bit of a laugh on Houses Of The Holy. All the previous albums had drawn from an eclectic group of influences but on Houses I think they might have pushed things a little too far. It's not a bad album but a couple of the experiments proved to be dead ends: D'yer Mak'er is a reggae song (it's meant to be pronounced Jamaica - try it in a West Midlands accent) which would leave Bob Marley with little to worry about and The Crunge is a James Brown style funk  workout - it's impossible to tell whether it is a spoof or a tribute. Even the closing The Ocean, an out and out hard rocker, is somewhat offbeat. However, when this album works, it works well and contains John Paul Jones's finest moment in No Quarter - a heavily keyboard and electronic based song which allows Plant to demonstrate the gentler side of his vocal range. Overall, not a bad effort which laid the groundwork for their next album.

Physical Graffiti is a double album: although the songs for it had been recorded over a five year period. After they had produced too many tracks for a single album the decision was made to use out-takes from previous albums and make this a two disk set. This doesn't affect the quality and I find it questionable as to why some of the tracks were ever left off the earlier albums. Maybe they didn't fit the style of those releases? Of all of Led Zeppelin's output Physical Graffiti is the most diverse: heavy rock (e.g. The Rover), blues (In My Time Of Dying - originally killed on Dylan's first album) and folk (Bron-Yr-Aur) are all in place but alongside there is rock and roll (Boogie with Stu), funk (Trampled Under Foot), a love ballad (the beautiful Ten Years Gone) and, as a centrepiece of the album, two strongly North African flavoured epics in Kashmir and In the Light. Kashmir is the better known of these having been used as a theme for various sporting events (e.g. the BBC's World Cup coverage in 2002). It even reached the top of the charts when Puff Daddy adapted it for the Godzilla theme tune. The song was inspired by a road trip Plant made on a family holiday through Morocco - something that he would often return to. The only odd thing is why he called the song Kashmir (which is in Northern India / Pakistan) - I suppose it must have scanned more easily than Marrakech. This was a real high point for the band but possibly the last time they were really functioning as a creative unit: a series of tragedies would follow that would take their toll on the band - and Plant in particular.

On 5 August 1975 Plant and his family were involved in a road accident in Rhodes which left him seriously injured and, at that point, uncertain whether he would be able to walk again. With touring out of the question the band recorded Presence which was released the following year. When I first bought this on vinyl I found it a rather dense recording to listen to - not that I didn't enjoy it but I found it rather heavy going listening end-to-end. In fact it has three tracks that must rate amongst their best: Nobody's Fault but Mine, an electric reworking of a traditional blues song; Tea For One, a slow blues rock number which describes a moment slowed to last an eternity; and Achilles Last Stand - this is one of the most intense rock workouts the band performed and includes some astonishing machine-gun drum rolls from Bonham. I never quite understood the lyrics until recently: they describe Plant's trips through North Africa through to the Atlas mountains. The Ancient Greek references and the title refer to Plants predicament: trapped in a wheelchair with a smashed ankle. The other tracks on the album are pretty decent so it makes me wonder what the album is lacking. I think the answer is actually precisely what it is lacking: little musical variety, no keyboards, no acoustic guitars or folk influences, little song writing input from Jones or Bonham. Seen as a Page and Plant side-project it possibly makes more sense. Plant was to recover from his injuries but worse was to come for both him and the band.

Whilst on tour in the US in 1977 Plant's 5 year old son, Karac, died, suddenly, from a viral infection. The tour was cancelled and a devastated Plant returned home with the future of Led Zeppelin in the balance. This is one loss that I doubt Plant has ever fully recovered from and he has written lyrics about it and even featured a picture of him with Karac in the liner notes of his 2003 retrospective album. In truth it should have been the end of Led Zeppelin but his close friend, John Bonham, encouraged him to sing and record again. The resulting album was In Through The Out Door. By contrast to Presence this was very heavily keyboard based - in fact a couple of tracks featured no writing credit for Jimmy Page. The album starts with In The Evening which almost encompasses every influence which they have demonstrated over the previous 10 years. It starts with an electronic drone and hints of Marrakech at sunset until, like an Imam calling the faithful to prayer, Plant yells out "In the evening!" and a typically Zeppelinesque riff breaks out over crashing drums and wailing vocals, add to that a crunching guitar solo and John Paul Jones's intricate keyboard backing and this is about as good as Zeppelin ever got - unfortunately, it is about as good as this album ever got. Actually, that is not entirely fair and much of this is well worth a listen, but it is a more considered and mature selection of songs. I think on re-listening I can appreciate some of the gentler songs: All Of My Love, Plant's song of love for his wife, is actually quite touching and the synth solo, in place of the usual guitar, makes for a refreshing change. I also love the drunken blues of the last track I'm Gonna Crawl. Overall, this was the more mature output of men who were now in their 30s. Jimmy Page had said that they wanted their next album to be a much heavier affair but, as it turned out, we will never find out. On 25 September 1980 John Bonham was found dead in his bed after inhaling vomit following a post-rehearsal, heavy-drinking session. This was the final straw for the band and they announced that the group would split shortly afterwards.

This was not quite the last new material to emerge from Led Zeppelin. In 1982 an album of previously unreleased material was published on a short album called Coda. This comes across as a much unloved contractual obligation affair and may as well have been called "The Taxman Came A 'Calling". I think they could have put out a decent collection if they had put their minds to it but as Physical Graffiti had hoovered up most of their early outtakes this consisted of mostly unfinished later material and other oddities. Only the last track, Wearing and Tearing, is anywhere near their usual quality and it isn't an album I will be bothering to buy on CD (I may go for the odd track on MP3 if I can put up with the poor sound quality). In fact they released a double CD of their BBC Sessions (mainly special recordings for John Peel's show) in 1997 and it is much more fitting collection with several songs that had never been previously released on an official album.

So that's the mighty Zep. All three members of the band went on to release a plethora of solo projects and I have seen Page and Plant perform live: both on their own and together. In fact, it was scanning through their solo releases that I realised what huge gaps I have in my collection. I bought all of Plant's solo albums on vinyl through to Manic Nirvana - which I bought on cassette for some reason (I think my turntable was broken at the time) . However, there are a few big releases which I have never ended up buying such as Dreamland and Fate Of Nations. In fact I nearly bought the latter - I loved the single, "29 Palms" and I can recall heading for the sales desk only to decide than DM35 (about £14 at the time) was a tad steep when I had some seriously more important things to be spending money on at that time. Having looked through Amazon I can see that most of his back catalogue is available very reasonably, in fact there are used sellers who have some albums for pennies plus postage (which still works out at well under £2 per album). I actually have most of Jimmy Page's stuff although I never bought any of John Paul Jones's solo work - arguably the most idiosyncratic of the three. Anyway, I've received another Amazon voucher so I'll see what the postman brings...

The Uncanny

I went to see the new Tintin film last weekend. This had much going for it: based on the original comics by Hergé, produced by Peter Jackson, with an initial script by Steven Moffat and directed by Steven Spielberg. I have to say I did enjoy it and it is refreshing to see an adaptation of a European comic rather than the standard Marvel / DC type adventure with their interchangeable caped avengers, implausible fight sequences,  pointless explosions and wafer thin plot. However, I spent the first half hour or so really taken aback by the odd animation process: this uses motion capture in which real actors film sequences which are then fed into a computer; the animated characters are then drawn over the actors' captured motion. The result is to give the action a very realistic feel but, given that the animated characters are taken from Hergé's often surreal drawing style, the end result is slightly disturbing: the eyes and mouths of the characters look real but the odd distorted features are really rather hallucinogenic. Apparently, I am not the only one to feel this and the effect even has a name: The Uncanny Valley.

The term Uncanny Valley was coined by Masahiro Mori, a robotics professor, based on a concept by Sigmund Freud that anything which looks and behaves almost ,but not quite, human will lead to revulsion and unsettlement in people. I think he may be on to something and I have often found things such as life-like dolls and automata to be a tad creepy - and yet they  fascinate me all the same. I studied robotics whilst at college (although this tended to be the industrial beasties) and I find things like chatterbot software interesting - although I have never found anything to approach the Turing test.

Tintin isn't the first film to use motion capture - similar techniques have been used in films such as Beowulf and Avatar. For some reason I didn't find those quite so odd. Avatar's animated sequence features blue alien humanoids or alien fauna and flora, whilst Beowulf's human characters are lifelike. Tintin appears to fall into the Uncanny Valley as it's characters appear close to human - but just not close enough. This effect is not new. My elder brother used to be terrified of the marionettes in Gerry Anderson's puppet series - but particularly the later ones such as Joe 90 which had its characters in correct anatomical proportions. Also, my children were quite freaked out by Disney's Snow White which used a technique called Rotoscoping in which the animated characters (at least the human ones) were drawn over film of the real actors.

Anyway, I hope this doesn't put anyone off Tintin. It was a very enjoyable night out (especially as I went to a 2D showing) and the film really brought the comic to life in a new and refreshing manner. In fact this was really what the last Indiana Jones should have been like - it seems that Spielberg is on form again.